February, 2009

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A new take on Friday “happy hours”

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

When we lived in California, Brad and I used to occasionally knock off work early on a Friday and go do something fun. (Not that it outweighs all the extra hours we put in, but this is one of the nice side benefits of having our own business.) Often, we went down to the beach or the harbor to walk, people watch, and, of course, eat.

Yesterday, in celebration of finally getting my desk cleaned off, we decided to go out and look for some more abandoned train cars. We found one, but then got sidetracked following a canyon road. This time it was Price Canyon, which is a few miles south of Apache (10 or 15 miles south of where we live.) These canyon roads, like the one our property is on, are all dirt roads that run west off 80, typically starting with with a few miles of beautiful open range land.

As the roads get closer to the Chiricahua Mountains, they meet up with the national forest.

Then the terrain gradually changes to more rocky mountains. This road first went through one of of the densest oak forests I’ve seen. It was beautiful. In general, the road was very good, but as we got back into the forest more, it got rougher, making us glad we have a big truck. There were some dry rock creek beds that were easy to imagine as rushing rivers in the wet season.

We saw a couple beautiful whitetail deer and many birds. Back in the forest, the rock walls and mountain faces were stunning. We can’t wait to come back and hike here. (From the end of the road, it’s 6 miles to Sentinel Peak and 9 miles to Rucker Lake.) There were some astoundingly tall pines as well. It is amazing how fast the flora changes here.

This was a pretty long road, going about 10 miles back before it ended at a trailhead that we can’t wait to hike and explore more. I rode most of the way back standing in the back of the truck bed (“safari-ing” as we call it), shooting some video. (Stay tuned for the video; I have a big work project to get through first.)

The day finished with us driving back into a beautiful sunset.

I have a feeling this will be the start of some great new Friday “happy hours,” possibly extending into some nice long weekend backpack trips. :)

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Tags: Coronado National Forest, Price Canyon

Old wrecked train cars

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

There used to be a railway through our valley. I know this in part because you can see old tracks in some places and in part because I researched a deed restriction related to the railroads when we bought our land.

As a result, there are several old abandoned train cars on the plains here. They are beautiful. I’ve begun photographing them and hope to have a whole collection of pictures soon. In the meantime, here’s a preview. (Click image to enlarge.)

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Tags: trains

Before and after

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

So we did decide to go with switching the living room and the office in our rental house. Here are the before and after pictures. (Note that none of this is our furniture.)

Living room before:

…and after (now the office):

Here’s the new living room (previously an empty room that we’d planned on being the office):

This isn’t our “dream house,” but it’s certainly more than adequate for the time while we’re building. And, while I was worried that having a home office might drive me crazy, so far it’s really fine. I actually enjoy not having to get up and “go to work” and being able to take a walk at lunch or after work in the surrounding beauty. (Knowing that dark is coming each evening around 4 or 5 is actually motivating me to stop work then.)

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Arugula

Sunday, February 1st, 2009

We were heading out to the Chiracahuas Sat. morning to hike (pics below), and we saw a produce stand set up on the side of the road. (Brad had read about this on a flyer at the post office, but I couldn’t believe it. Produce in Jan., when it’s in the 20s at night? The farmers markets around here don’t open until May or June.) We stopped and found a small selection of things and bought a bag of arugula and a bag of chard. The guy who runs the stand grows it in a big greenhouse that it turned out is only a couple miles from our property.

After our hike, we went home and made dinner, which included a salad. That arugula was amazing! We are looking forward to getting more.

These pictures are from the South Fork part of the Chiracahuas. You can get to it by driving into the park past Portal. It also connects to Horseshoe Canyon on the back side. (This is roughly 7 or 8 miles from our property. Some day we’ll do a big hike or even a backpacking trip back here.)